Although Mel Zaelich may be a newer name in the SEO industry landscape, she is far from new to SEO. After spending 20 years in advertising and marketing, Mel recognized early that search would become one of the most important growth channels for small businesses. So when she launched her own company, Happy Place Interiors in 2016, she invested in SEO immediately. The strategy worked. Her website has held Page 1 rankings for years, appears in AI Overviews, and is now surfacing inside ChatGPT’s search results, a milestone that many small business owners dream of. But the more success Mel experienced, the more she noticed something: her peers, brilliant small business owners, were struggling. Not because they lacked talent, but because SEO felt complicated, technical, and out of reac...